


a little bit about you for our files

by lyin



Series: sabacc [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-11
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9655952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyin/pseuds/lyin
Summary: Jyn Erso is a ghost Cassian Andor chases in his spare time.[Cassian Andor, in search of Kestrel Dawn, Tanith Ponta, Liana Hallik- and then Kestrel Dawn, again...a direct prequel to 'extending into shooting stars']





	

**Author's Note:**

> In Ye Olde EU - as you may already know if you've have been spending time on Wookiepedia- Aach was the code name of a Rebel agent known for working closely with Bail Organa and Kestrel Dawn was the name of a dark-haired, green-eyed, vaguely-criminal Rebel recruit in the year of the Battle of Yavin with a crack shot and a mysterious past. 
> 
> AKA, the Visual Guide retconned them into the EU and I'm running away with that left and right in this series. 
> 
> So, in a very-slightly shifted universe: Cassian, tracking Jyn.

Jyn Erso is a ghost Cassian Andor chases in his spare time.

The name ‘Galen Erso’ is attached to too many Imperial transmissions at the highest level of encryption, the name of a disappeared man with a dangerous mind. It was flagged even before the mission to Darkknell obtained an eight-card datapack - with Galen Erso’s name all over the final two data cards, in regards to a Project called Celestial Power.

The Darkknell data is the best lead they have on the whispered weapon of weapons, but most of the data dates back to Empire Day and suspect, besides, coming as it did from an Imperial who'd hoped to make a fortune off selling it to the Rebellion.

That datapack has been the compass pointing most of Cassian’s missions, since - fair enough, as it was partly down to him, his contact, that the Alliance got ahold of it.

Jyn Erso starts as a line in Galen Erso’s file, listed under progeny. _One: daughter, Jyn, missing_.

There’s hope in missing, instead of dead, and so Cassian follows that thread as well as he can.

It’s idle, at first, a short spool to busy his mind in downtime, and then- “ _Erso’s daughter used to run with Saw Gererra,_ " confirmed, from a Rebel who used to run with Saw himself.

It lights a fuse.

No one’s seen the girl with Saw in years, and, most likely, Jyn Erso died, just a little later than she was supposed to, nameless and lost under one of a million stars. Still...

Mon Mothma immediately sets Jyn Erso as a priority, and General Draven gives standing orders to Alliance slicers to look into potential matches and report to Captain Andor as part of the ongoing investigation into Galen.

Between, and en route to, missions - Anchoron and Alderaan, Eiloroseint and Chemvau - Cassian reviews and follows up on the slicers’ findings.

He goes through flagged Imperial bounties and death records, pulls aside the never-claimed bounty on a Kestrel Dawn. Kestrel, from the planet Questal: the identity’s entirely false, unused in the years the bounty was placed - but well-constructed, with hallmarks of Partisan forgeries.

While waiting for K-2 to finish a post-mission oil bath, Cassian drinks a terrible lum ale and skims a datapad the slicing team prepared on a Tanith Ponta. One arrest, record scrubbed, likely by a bribed security officer, but reconstructed as best as the team was able. Two prior citations for bar fights, one for a ‘disturbance of the peace’  that may or may not have been another bar fight.

For one sip, Cassian wonders what ‘Tanith Ponta’ might have been drinking, if, she, too, is drinking alone, wherever and whoever she is now-  and then banishes the thought, as if it never was.   

She’s slicing her own identities. It’s a hunch- the only evidence for is the absolute dearth of leads from any identity forgers. So Cassian doesn’t tell Draven or put it in the file, does the same thing he always does, with things he doesn’t tell Draven or put in a file: talks to K-2SO about it.

“If that’s so, then you realize that even if the full manpower of Rebel Intelligence dedicated itself to nothing but pursuing every trade and illegal sale of blank holochips and unlocked transponders in the galaxy,” K-2 says dubiously, “the odds of tracking one woman’s false identity drop to… you’re making that face again, Cassian. Fine. Why is the probability irrelevant this time?”

Cassian shrugs at the droid. It’s true that if Jyn Erso went to some beautiful planet, kept her head down, under a self-constructed, trail-free name - the odds of finding her would be near to _never_.

“Kestrel Dawn and Tanith Ponta lived loudly,” he says. “We’ll find her.”

 _Liana Hallik_ comes up in an Imperial database as a _person of interest,_ questioned but released in forgeries used to access a Santhe/Sienar Technologies warehouse. It’s not the first time an identity’s triggered a match for all strings the Alliance algorithm is searching, but it is the first time one holds up to Cassian’s manual scrutiny and the first time he heads in person to track her.  

He comes back from the Tion Cluster without a solid lead but with the best quality holo of Hallik so far, puts it alongside the poor quality image associated with Dawn’s bounty and the reconstruction of the holo from Ponta’ scrubbed arrest. He gives the images to Draven alongside one of Galen Erso’s dead wife, from back in her university days.

“Do you know how many women with this exact coloring there are in this galaxy?” Draven sighs, but immediately thereafter Liana Hallik becomes a person of interest for the Rebellion, too. Intel field agents who are nowhere close to the clearance to hear _Jyn Erso_ know to report any word of Hallik.

Cassian tracks down her few known associates, finds most dead, imprisoned, or long out of touch. Her holo - captured at a casino, not close-up footage but a little looping video taken from above of her biting her lips and playing a sabacc hand - stays tucked in his jacket. He only plays it when asking after her, never when by himself. That’s not Cassian’s brand of foolishness, and he’ll figure her out by her footsteps, not her face.

But it’s an agent only on his third mission, a long-term undercover op, who sends in word that a warrant for Hallik’s been issued, long before it makes it through the Imperial bureaucracy and into an interceptable log.

Cassian’s on Scipio, midway through a sector loop of checking in with old informants - as much to gauge if any have become millstones around the Alliance’s collective neck as for new intel. He’s far from the crossroads of the Hydian Way and the Perlemian trade route, where the warrant’s issued, and receives orders to stay put while closer agents are sent. Likely, they’ll be too late to prevent arrest but will pursue both her transfer orders and details on how she’s been burning her prior days.

“Liana Hallik’s arrest is good news,” K-2 notes, in a tone that indicates he’s aware Cassian’s not taking it that way. “She’s not going anywhere, in prison. The Rebellion can collect her when we want. If we want.”

“Not if she’s sent to Kessel,” Cassian counters.

There is a thrill in Galen Erso’s long-sought daughter becoming a known element - a weapon waiting in a drawer - and yet, there’s a dullness, too, in the ghost being caught. Cassian’s too used to the taste of regret to notice it on his tongue.

Shortly after he bites his tongue so hard it bleeds, cursing, and regretting that glimmer of disappointment. The details that come back aren’t on Liana Hallik’s arrest and transfer, but Liana Hallik’s arrest and _escape_.  

It’s Dawn again, the next they hear of her, from underworld connections on Ord Mantell. She’d resurrected the Kestrel Dawn identity - risking an old, small Imperial bounty over a warrant for a recently escaped felon - not a bad move, to give herself time to regroup.

By the time Cassian’s sent to Ord Mantell, she’s a ghost again.

There’s a few underworld contacts she traded with, one bounty hunter confirmed on her tail, a ship rented under her name - a ship that never took off. There’s signs a shoot-out took place in its docking bay.

If Cassian had a credit for every shoot-out in a docking bay he’s come across, he could buy a moon.

“This is ridiculous,” K-2 announces. “She’s probably dead in one of the back alleys where twelve percent of Ord Mantell tourists disappear.”

“She’s not a tourist, and she hasn’t been dead any of the times yet.”

“One of these times she’s bound to be,” K-2 says, and Cassian can’t disagree.

He prowls the back alleys where tourists disappear and pays a small-time bounty hunter, a furry thing with batlike ears from a species even Cassian can’t place, after learning the hunter had been in the docking bay, part of a whole crew after Dawn.

“Come, really,” he says, leaning in to talk over bar music, “someone of your caliber - the price on the woman’s head couldn’t have tempted you?”

It hadn’t. She’d apparently once stolen from a bounty hunter named Skorr, personally pissing him off enough to loop in his local colleagues. More than just Kestrel Dawn’s meager bounty - Skorr had promised them the going rate for a captured Rebel.

The bounty hunter’s batlike ears move up and down in a shrug-like motion. “ISB thinks every troublemaker’s a Rebel at the moment. It’s good for business.”

Cassian buys another round and says, “To business, then,” since he can’t exactly toast _to Rebels everywhere_. “All the footwork to track her down and none of you got a single credit out of the local branch of the Security Bureau?”

“Skorr got paid,” the bounty hunter complains, saliva dripping from his teeth as he grimaces. “Investigations pays for leads, and he was able to point ‘em to where she was going.”

Cassian has to fight to keep his expression easy. The Empire has two Intelligence outfits - Military Intelligence, and the civilian Imperial Security Bureau. Both pose a threat to the Rebellion, but ISB’s double the size of Military Intelligence and better kitted. Investigations is the branch directly charged with countering the Alliance, empowered to appropriate and employ military assets as seen fit. They’ve been directly responsible for the destruction of more than one Alliance base and takedown of dozens of planetary resistance cells.

The captain of the ship Dawn hired was taken into ISB custody and never came back out. During the shootout, Dawn herself seems to have jumped on board - or possibly pirated - a ship departing the docking bay. The ship was crewed by three petty scammers, no one of importance, but an ISB agent has gone after it - the local security office thinks the officer’s following ‘Rebel recruits’, ‘halfway across the galaxy’.

“Finally,” K-2 says, as Cassian hustles back on board the ship.

“Set course to-” Cassian pauses, racking his mind for the next step as the boarding ramp rises. “Drunost.”

“Really?” K-2 says. “We don’t need to refuel-”

“K,” Cassian snaps.

“Someone’s mood was not improved by seeing the fifteen moons and cometary clouds of-”

“Please, K,” Cassian says, moving to the controls himself.

“Fine,” K-2 says, mollified by the please. “Calculating. We have approximately thirty seconds to see the native flutterplumes fly by before we break atmo and an additional three minutes to appreciate the pinkish cast of the clouds before we’re ready to jump to hyperspace.”

K’s downloaded the travel guide, again.

“It could be pinker,” K-2 observes, the second they’re back in space. “Much pinker. Living beings are said to be brought to tears at the sight of this, Cassian. I don’t get it.”

“Me neither,” Cassian says, without even bothering to look. His focus is forward.

  
  


* * *

Drunost is a pirate-ridden backworld in the Colonies. Its system has only one Star Destroyer across fifty light years- which has helped make Drunost a critical supply line for the Alliance.

From hyperspace, Cassian sent a coded message back to Base One, received go-ahead from Draven: _Risk of compromise sufficiently minimal. Proceed_.

There’s a Procurement and Supply Alliance officer currently on Drunost, who Cassian knows he can reach without an issue. He delivered a message from Organa there, not long ago. The officer’s from Alderaan.

Upon arrival, he sets a visual signal in place overnight - the visual signal in this place being K-2SO, in for ‘repairs’ at the shop across from the officer’s lodging.

Cassian then waits, hunkered on a rooftop blocks away, for a familiar face.

He sees her hair first. It’s light, though dyed more yellow than the white she keeps it between assignments, or when she wants to be remembered only by dramatic hair, not for her face and eyes. The face and eyes that, when made up correctly, bear more than a passing resemblance to Princess Leia Organa.

Carefully checking behind him, he then follows procedure and tails her to the secure location. It’s changed since his last trip to Drunost- the Alliance has taken over an extensive smuggling hold that dates back to the Republic Days.

Cassian follows her through the hangar’s disguised blast door to find the hidden wing full not only of shipping crates but critical communications equipment, and an officer monitoring transmissions from smaller Alliance bases.

“Targeter,” he greets her. Most of Intelligence only knows her by that name, but Cassian’s spent years delivering messages to and from Alderaan, seen the princess and her bodyguard-trained friend slipping like white shadows down too many corridors.  

“Aach,” she says, her lip turning up a bit at the name. It’s a little less impressive than Fulcrum.

(“Perhaps it’s a common name taken from a river, or perhaps it’s the noise I make every time you show up without a sound,” Bail said, when providing that code name, with a comfortable sort of amusement Cassian had no frame of reference for.)

She has a canteen in her hand and presses it into his. It’s warm to the touch - filled with caf.

“I need your memory,” he tells her.

Winter Retrac is the daughter of Bail Organa’s former aide and grew up in the Organa household. She’s on Procurement instead of Intelligence proper since the day Leia Organa needs a decoy, the woman who’s been trained for the role had better be alive. That, and Bail holds the life of his friend’s child as dearly as his own daughter’s.

She also has perfect holographic and audiographic recall, making her too valuable to Alliance Intelligence to serve as a senatorial aide, to be placed anywhere near Coruscant.

“I assumed. I didn’t exactly think you were here for the caf,” Winter says, a touch of - something - in her voice. Loneliness, Cassian thinks, or homesickness. It’s her first year fully away from Alderaan. None of it touches her face, though, and her hand gesture toward seats near the transmission screen is palatially elegant.

He plays the holo of Liana Hallik for her. Winter’s working primarily to secure arms, and gun running, by the pattern, is Jyn Erso’s fallback, whatever her name. Winter bites her lip in perfect, memorizing imitation of the girl in the holo as she watches, then shakes her head.

That hadn’t been likely. She does have, though, what he was counting on - more details than she really ought on all the roaming recruitment agents that have passed through Drunost since she was stationed here. Not all are General Draven’s direct reports; precious few are tracked by Base One. Operatives either call in - or they don’t, and actions are taken accordingly.  

He goes through every potentially triggering detail as she listens, a little frustratingly serene, until he mentions the name of the ISB Officer - Barezz, a common Coruscanti name.

“A GX-1 Lantillian Short Haul picked up fuel for General Reekeene twenty-five days ago,” Winter interrupts. “An Officer Barezz of the ISB destroyed a shuttle with six anticipated recruits.”  

Reekeene operates off a mobile base, a converted water freighter, and runs an outfit of Irregulars - a hit-and-run strike team. Saw Gererra’s group used to be classed as Irregulars.

Using the communications setup, Cassian contacts Draven for as much of a breakdown as can be sent regarding any and all Intelligence assigned to Reekeene.

There is, as Cassian suspected, a recruitment agent semi-permanently attached to Reekeene. General Reekeene is notoriously careful with her base - even Draven doesn’t have her coordinates, and, as her team faces high odds of capture, she doesn’t have Base One’s. Messages to and from her have to bounce off five satellites, to avoid tracers.

Cassian, distracted, finally sips his caf - finds it spiced, a moment of extra care Winter shouldn’t have bothered to take.

If it was him recruiting for Reekeene - not that he’s ever been assigned to any branch of the Alliance so remote, not since Draven took a scrap of a Separatist and made him his left hand -  if it was him... He’d provide astrogation data to the recruits and have them procur a ship. Meet them somewhere remote, a location only he would know. Escort them to meet the mobile base at a previously-arranged location, known to only a few, certainly not to be shared over transmission.

Could be Dawn took astrogation data from a recruiter, looking for a safe haven from Imperials and bounty hunters alike. Could be she boarded a ship of recruits, unknowingly- the profiles of the ship’s crew, while they wouldn’t be Cassian’s picks, match the needs of Reekeene’s Roughnecks. Could be both, though Cassian suspects K-2 would give that awfully low odds. Could be the ISB officer was on the wrong track entirely - he wouldn’t be the first Imperial overeager to capture “Rebels”.

“Draven’s pinging for a response,” Winter tells him.

With the expedited connection, Draven’s impatient, expecting status on the Erso girl.  

Cassian has to think about it for a while, his fingers tapping, both against the canteen and on the counter. He doesn’t need to worry about being still, for the moment.

He needs the message to say:

Kestrel Dawn likely en route to join the Rebel Alliance.

Possibly on purpose. Possibly by mistake.

Really, only she could say.

**Author's Note:**

> If you, like me, grew up on Ye Olde EU novels, you might be fond of Winter, who I have thrown in here for kicks. And if you did not, all you need to know is More Ladies in Star Wars is near and dear to my heart and my favorite thing about Ye Olde Canon was the Many Kickass Ladies to Chose From, who are therefore appearing throughout this series, because fan fic is the realm of Why Not and Because I Can. 
> 
> I initially started what is now 'extending shooting stars' with this, largely just enjoying messing around in the Star Wars universe and using Star Wars phrases & planets & etc etc., before I jumped to the current opening and only just looked at this and realized it was a oneshot's worth. So here, more words! Cheers & happy weekend to you all. 
> 
> Some of the events Cassian's tracking in this fic are a Jyn-ified version of [this Kestrel Dawn comic](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G91_pYVtPSU).
> 
> At some point I'll finish the opposite side of the coin - how Jyn-as-Kestrel wound up joining the Rebellion - and tack that on to this series too.
> 
> (There is also an inevitable Hoth oneshot which at this point is mostly just bad jokes about Han and Cassian's similar jackets, but that'll be post 'extending shooting stars'. And if you're thinking I'm just naming my fics and chapters off of lyrics from the Rogue One Spotify Playlists, you are very much not wrong.)


End file.
